Sunday, August 29, 2010

Become an entrepreneur, not an economist

One of the things that soured me on libertarianism is that it seems to be dominated by intellectuals who talk about the market but aren't willing to put their money where their mouth is and leave the classroom to become actors in the market.

Peter J. Boettke...the 50-year-old professor of economics at George Mason University in Virginia is emerging as the intellectual standard-bearer for the Austrian school of economics...

In the last decade at George Mason, he has helped recruit the Austrian school's leading scholars and drawn students from around the world. Roughly 75% of his students have gone on to teach economics at the college or graduate level.

Read that last sentence again: "Roughly 75% of his students have gone on to teach economics at the college or graduate level."

Why aren't they becoming entrepreneurs? We don't need more economists. We need people to start businesses. Entrepreneurs are the creative agents in a market economy, they are the ones who make it all work. If you are really inspired by the idea of the free market then why on earth would you become yet another social science technocrat with tenure at a state university? Why wouldn't you want to roll up your sleeves and take action in the market?

2 comments:

I agree. In fact I would like to see a study of entrepreneurship among libertarians, conservatives, progressives etc. My gut feeling tells me that progressives are more entrepreneurial than libertarians.